Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to you all.
Sometimes in the desert a great storm awakes. Visibility reduces to a
couple of inches with all the sand lifted into the air. Breating becomes
the sole activity a person clinch to. It is then when most people will
hide in a fissure to seek some relief, hearing the violence of the storm,
but seeing it not. Only the brave hearted with inner sight will stumble
along in such a storm to search for somebody else lost.
I present the following complex contribution as the outcome of my own
questioning and answering. I do not claim that my learning has to be the
same with you. I would rather urge you to use this contribution as an aid
to create your own questions and produce your own answers to them.
Question even this contribution freely so as to overcome its theoretical
nature and also avoid rote learning.
I wanted to name this contribution "The art of questioning", but then I
ought to have called it "The martial art of questioning". Why? When a
person learns by questioning and somebody else becomes aware of it, that
other person will often react nasty to the learner. It is frequently also
a surprise to the learner because he/she did not expect such destructive
behaviour from the other person, especially if that person is someone like
a teacher or a manager who with superior knowledge in a leading capacity
should have answered the question nicely. Why?
Learning proceed best through questioning. To learn we have to create. We
cannot create in the void like God. Thus our learning creations have to
begin with existing creations which we extend according to its manner of
each. The "mental eye" enabling us to look closely at any existing
creation, is the "art of questioning". Consequently when we begin to learn
by questioning, we "look mentally" at existing creations. This questioning
is not any judgement, but the "realistic recognition" of these creations.
This "realistic recognition" is often called "critical thinking", but even
"critical thinking" has too much judgement in it to describe what we are
doing primarily with questioning.
It is because of this "realistic recognition" of these creations that
other persons behave destructively towards questioning. They may have many
reasons for behaving nasty, but in the end it comes down on the superior
mental force which the learner yields by such questioning. They perceive
such questioning as indicating their own inferior way of handling these
creations. It is not the learner who judge them, but they who judge
themselves with destructive consequences. The tragic effect of judgements
is to curtail constructive creativity drastically with respect to such
creations. They feel threatened. In terms of the Digestor as model for
evolutionary creativity, it means that someone who perceived questioning
as judgement, has acknowledged intuitively that he/she cannot create
constructively with these creations being questioned.
This brings us as learners to the very nature of our own capacity to
question. Our questioning is intimately connected to our capacity to
create. The better our creativity is, the better we can question. In other
words, should we have difficulty in questioning for whatever reason, we
ought to seek the source of such difficulty in our immature creativity. It
means that when we want to imbetter our questioning and thus our learning,
we have to improve our creativity. But this improved creativity will only
be beneficial to our questioning and learning when we know that such a
connection exists and the way in which such a connection operates. In
other words, creative people need to know about the web between creativity
and questioning-learning to reap the benefits of their creativity.
What kind of creations do we need to question so as to succeed with our
learning? Our answer to this question has profound ramifications on our
learning. When we question all kind of creations, thinking of the universe
as nothing else than the system of all kinds of creations, i.e Creation,
then our learning will be universal -- alive, inclusive, holistic,
effective, measurable, rich and open. But should we question merely a few
kinds of creations, if not only one kind of creation, then our learning
wull become progressively rigid, exclusive, fragmentary, esoteric, poor
and isolated. The kind of creations we will avoid most, are the talking
and writing of others based on their own learning. To question them
usually leads to nasty reactions. We then usually pick a few subjects --
if not only one -- out of many, try to become experts in it, hoping that
as experts we will be spared from such nasty reactions. But we usually end
up in the tyranny of the experts.
In terms of "deep creativity", creations are basically two of a kind. We
have "natural creations" in which humankind played no role and "cultural
creations" in which humankind played a role, including even ignorance to
the role played. These "natural creations" and "cultural creations" are
actually not dialectical (opposing) duals, but complementary duals.
However, many humans, perhaps the majority, may perceive them as
dialectical duals. Again the reason is the Digestor action. The Digestor
becomes our fate rather than our fortune, our bog rather rather than our
mountain. We perceive ourselves to be in a never ending battle with nature
as our enemy rather than acting as nature's steward.
A digesting crystal decreasing rather than increasing in size may be
viewed as caught up in a dialectical calamity. This will happen whenever
there is ignorance to what gives that crystal its digestive advantage and
how that crystal may gain in this advantage. The digestive advatantages
result from the constructive emergences in the initial formation of the
crystal far from equilibrium. The more complex the birth of the crystal in
the seven essentialities of creativity (liveness, sureness, wholeness,
fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness), the better the crystal
can grow digestively. In other words, the more complex the sevenpfold form
of our creativity, the better the questions we will ask and the better the
answers we will find to our questions.
But these seven essentialities do not guarantee a disgestive advantage for
all times. Another crystal may appear on the scene which is self much more
complex in the seven essentialities. Because of this complexity, the
growth of that crystal is much slower. Consequently it may take a very
long time to become aware of that crystal in the surroundings SU acting as
taker (predator) rather than as giver (prey). When the learner (system SY)
becomes aware of such a superior crystal in the surroundings, the learner
will then have to respond by matching or even superceding this decouring
crystal by making self a creative collapse. Thus the learner release some
of his/her own creative free energy by giving up some of his/her mental
organisation gained in terms of the existing complexity of the seven
essentialities. This free energy is then used by way of internal entropy
production to complexify all the seven essentialities.
The complexification of the seven essentialities has to happen by way of a
spontaneous "creative collapse" managed by the learner (system) self. The
learner has to release self his/her free energy to create self by way of
entropy production within the self. Any non-spontaneous forcing of the
learner by deludging him/her with entropy created in the surroundings will
not lead to a carefully managed creative collapse, but rather in an
uncontrolled destructive immergence. The learner tries to match up against
the non-spontaneous forcing, but loses the match because the complexity of
his/her seven essentialities at that stage are no match to what the
surroundings inposes on them. Whatever free energy the learner has, it is
dissipated in trying to win a lost cause. The only way to avoid this, is
for the surroundings to act as steward, carefully probing the complexity
of the seven essentialities of the learner so as not to expect too much
from them.
The seven essentialities make us aware to the mechanics or form of our
questioning. The more we know about them, the more we can improve on the
form of our questioning. But our questioning has also a dynamics or
content. The form of our questioning may be satisfactoraly, but its
content may be severely restricted. It will then be then like a car.
Although its form (like carburetation, ignition and transmission) is in
perfect working order, it has no fuel in the tank. The seven
essentialities as form, even though self very complex, will leave us
stranded without as content the associated free energy and entropy
production. Although we will know what to question and that we will have
to produce answers, but we will not have the guts to do so.
This means that our knowing of the "what" and "how" of questioining is not
sufficient. We will also have to know the "why". The far majority of
people claim that we question because we are curious. In other word,
curiosity is offered as reason for questioning. But we have to question
even this claim. Curiosity may be an outcome of something else just as
active questioning is an outcome of it. In other words, we may have a
one-to-many-maping of "one something" to curiosity (a propensity) as well
as to questioning (an activity). Should it be a one-to-many-mapping, then
we ought to search fo other outcomes too so as to get a better
understanding of this "one something" actings as inut.
Curiosity like happiness and awe are what we may call the "adjoints of
constructive emergences". They are immediate mamifestations of the fact
that our spiritual tank is becoming refueled. In other words, as our
spiritual free energy increases, our curiosity (propensity for
questioning) increases too as well as our happiness and awe. These
"adjoints of constructive emergences" depend on our past tual emergences.
In the case of questions, they depend on finding answers to these
questions. These answers can be either imported from the surroundings SU
or be created by the system self. Only when the system creates the answers
self, will they qualify as constructive emergences and thus manifest their
typical adjoints like curiosity and happiness. But when these answers had
emerged constructively in the surroundings after which they became
imported rather than created self, they have lost all their power for
refueling the empty tank. Their adjonts belong to the person who created
them, not the person's who imported them.
Obviously, whatever reasons we may offer to prevent a learner of creating
questions and answers self, the effect of such prevention is to suppress
the self refueling of the spiritual free energy of the system. In other
words, our negative or destructive responses to questions and their
answers are deadly to the spirit of questioning. We may use this lethel
effect to suppress the questioning of others for opportunistic reasons,
but in the end it is a double edged sword which suppresses also our own
questioning and thus learning. In other words, any negative behaviour of
ourselves towards questioning and learning will in the end boomerang
against ourselves. This brings us to the most important question to be
asked in this contribution:
. "Do we self want to learn?"
I have asked thousands of people, especially pupils and learners, over
three decades this question. I have checked their anwers by asking the
question from many different angles. The far great majority really want to
learn. However, almost as many of them who want want to learn, they want
to learn in terms of some or other conditions. Those who want to learn
unconditionally are almost as rare as those who do not want to learn. So
what does it mean to learn conditionally? It means that when certain
conditions are satisfied, we will learn, but when thess conditions are not
satisfied, we do not want to learn. That which we do not want to learn is
in the far majority of cases related to our Mental Models rather than
sheer ignorance. The main reason for this avoidance is our inability to
question the authenticity of our Mental Models.
Let us then think of "unconditional learning" as a way to indicate our
willingness to question everything, even the authenticity of our Mental
Models. When is "unconditional learning" possible? It is most striking
that small children learns almost unconditionally. But as the kid's
knowledge increases, his/her learning almost invariable become more
conditional too. In order to curtail this conditional learning, we cannot
decrease our knowledge. Yet an increase in knowledge seems to promote
conditional learning. Can we escape this predicament? Yes, when we allow
some of our knowledge to emerge into higher levels of spirituality. This
part of our knowledge which is sustaining an emergence into something of
higher complexity is not free any more to interfere with our learning. It
means that the more our knowledge serves the higher levels of
spirituality, the less i dictates self our learning (i.e. incremental
advancing of our knowledge).
Unconditional learning thus requires from us to question also our higher
levels of spirituality like faith and love. But it is especially here
where our questions seem to hit the fan and get reflected as nasty
responses in all directions. To question knowledge is one thing, but to
question for example faith is another thing. For the former we might get
excommunicated, but for the latter we almost tender for burning at the
stake. In order to avoid these destructive immergences when questioning
faith, we invoke the condition that we will not question faith. The domino
effect of this is that we stop questioning even love-agape. Hence we cease
learning that love-agape is actually unconditional. Sadly, we also do not
learn that the back-action of love-agape to the lover levels of our
spirituality is to free ourselves from the conditions set up to preserve
those Mental Models acquired by rote learning.
In order to avoid destructive immergences when questioning, we should
never invoke conditions unless we have questioned these conditions self
thoroughly. The reason why we invoke conditions at all, whether right or
wrong, is the Law of Requisite Complexity. We need a certain level of
complexity to question the next level of complexity so as to learn about
it. But how do we express the requisite level of complexity? One powerful
way to do so is by using the seven essentialities of creativity. Each
essentiality helps us to become aware of questions which we can ask and
produce answers for. As we use these essentialties to create questions,
our inner experience with these essentialties also increases. The outcome
of this by way of emergences is first tacit knowledge and eventually
additional formal knowledge on them. In other words, as we use the
essentialties to question other issues, we become more complex in them
too.
How can we use these seven essentialties to generate questions? Let us
answer this question by considering the following statement.
. "The seven essentialities can be used to
. generate questions for learning."
There is nothing extraordinary about this statement, even though its uses
the unfamiliar term "seven essentialties". For an introduction to them, see:
< http://www.learning-org.com/98.03/0336.html > and what follows.
As for the statement itself, it is merely one among many tens of thousands
statements which have been formulated on our LO-dialogue on hundreds of
topics. Each one of these statements can be subjected to a generation of
questions as we now will do with this statement. By answering each of the
questions generated on any statement, we will learn more about the meaning
of such a statement. This is a poweful way to become deeply involved with
the talk of any fellow learner rather than judging this talk to be boring.
See now below how one statement can be mapped into many questions. Is this
not a most peculiar one-to-many-mapping? Is this one-to-many-mapping not
also an outcome of LEP (Law of Entropy Production) -- the basic source of
all one-to-many-mappings?
The first essentiality to consider, is liveness ("becoming-being"). When
the question begins with "what", it will focus on the being or structure.
But when the question begins with "how", it will focus on the becoming or
process. In other words, when we ask "What questions will be generated by
the 7-E's?", we need to answer the structure within and among all these
questions. But when we ask "How will questions be generated by the 7-E's?,
we need to answer how to produce each of these questions. When we take any
noun from the sentence and question it, the question will be of a "what"
type. For example, in the statement the noun "essentiality" can generate a
"what" question. Here is an example. What is an essentiality? But
"becoming" and "being" are complementary to each other. So we can also
create a question involving the verb complementary to essentiality. Here
is an example. How does something become essential to something else?
The second essentiality to consider, is that of sureness
("identity-categoricity"). We often seek surenss by a question which
begins with "why" rather than "what" or "how". We seek for the context of
some word in the statement which will add to its meaning. Consider, for
example, the word "question" in the statement above. Why do questions work
better for learning than commands or statements? Or consider, for example,
the word "essentialities" in the statement. Why do we use the word
"essentialities" rather than any other facet of creativity to generate
questions? Also consider the word "generate" as example. Why do we use the
word "generate" rather than words like "develop" or manufacture" to
indicate how the questions come into existence? Lastly, consider the word
"learning" as example. Why do we generate questions for "learning" rather
than for knowledge or information?
The third essentiality to consider, is that of wholeness ("monadicity-
associativity"). Here our questions may begin with any of the words like
"what", "how" and "why" which we have encountered before. We then may
search for unity with our questions. For example, we may ask: What will
happen when we use less than all seven essentialities to generate
questions. How will overstressing one essentiality and neglecting the
other six influence the questions by which we learn? Why does answering
these generated questions lead to greater wholeness? We may also search
for associativity patterns in the wholeness. For example, we may ask:
Between what and what do the seven essentialities operate as mouthpieces
or mediators? This is a profound question of which the answer gives us a
dazzling insight between knowledge and learning.
The fourth essentiality to consider, is that of fruitfulness
("connect-beget"). Questions which we can ask here are like: With what
must an essentiality connect effectively to generate a question? How does
an essentiality result in a question? How does a question result into an
answer? What contributes to our learning, generating questions, finding
answers to them or both? With what must a created answer connect in order
to be a valid response -- even when immature -- to a question? Since the
word generate suggests genes, what are the genes by which questions are
generated? Since a Greek word for answer is "apocrisis" where the prefix
"apo-" means "away from", to what as the "crisis" does this Greek word
refer? Can a question be considered as a bifurcation and the answer as the
emergence to it? What will the destructive immergence to a question be?
Since a Greek word for "to question" is "zetemao" where "mao" is "to
stive", what does a question strive for?
The fifth essentiality to consider, is that of spareness
("quantity-limit"). Here we can generate the following kind of questions.
Can questions and their answers quantify our learning? What are the limits
to our learning brought about by its quantification through questions and
answers? Does each essentiality induce its own kind of limit? What will
become depleted by creating questions and their answers so as to sustain
our learning? Is the quantum mechanical phenomenon of the "advanced
reduction of the wave packet by its explication" applicable in this
depletion? How will the spiritual free energy of a learner change when
creating questions and and then creating answers to them?
The sixth essentiality to consider, is that of otherness
("quality-variety"). Here we may seek for the full diversity of each
concept made use of in the statement. For example, we may ask: What else
can we use to generate questions with to sustain our learning? Does the
"art of mauetics" (creating questions and their answers) enable us to
emergent learning at the edge of chaos or digestive learning close to
equilibrium? Which of emergent learning or digestive learning leads to
increasing diversity? We may also seek for all the qualities involved with
every concept occuring in the statement. For example, we may ask: What
qualities are involved with the verb "use"? What qualities are involved
with the verb "learn"? How will we manage the qualities applicable to each
action? What will our Total Quality Management (TQM) amount to for the
"art of mauetics"?
The seventh and last essentiality to consider, is that of openness ("open-
paradigm"). Have the seven essentialities opened your mind to a new way of
thinking? What is your present learning paradigm? Are you willing to shift
your present learning paradigm to the basic tenet "To learn is to create"?
Are you willing to create questions and answers so as to sustain your
learning? Why does talking and writing, whenever they involve more than a
few statements, cause the negative reaction "Too much talking and
writing"? To which one of the five elementary sustainers of creativity
(dialogue [thoughts-exchanging], exemplar-exploring, problem-answering,
game-playing or art-expressing does question-answering ("art of mauetics")
belong. Should I not have kept the "art of mauetics" a closed secret? Does
God encourage or forbid us to question Him? This brings us again to the
most important question to be asked in this contribution:
. "Do we self want to learn?"
As I have said before, after thirty years my conclusion is that most
people want to learn self. However, the act of learning has certain
qualities which we will have to face like authenticity, intensionality,
sincerity, sensibility and seriousness ("sericity"?). What troubles me
deeply is that when young children (before they even go to school) learn
by talking, exploring, playing and expressing, they do it with all these
qualities shining like jewels. However, as they get into school and become
older, these qualities lose their luster so as to become dull in most
adults. To question these dull qualities of learning in any educational
institution or training company seems to be an act of high treason. To
demand them from any learner seems to be a worse crime than questioning
the learner. What is going to become of our civilisations should we
persist in making learning banal, thus destroying the wisdom in the
biological name for humankind -- Homo SAPIENSE?
Should the restoring of learning to its full grandeur not be shared in the
vision of all Learning Organisations?
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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